Simple Surveillance
by Frankie McStein
Summary: They were expecting this to be a simple little case. But now Magnum is in surgery and Higgins is in shock.


Higgins stared at the blood on her hands. It was dried over her fingers, caked beneath her nails. Smears ran over her wrists and trailed up her arms. She could feel it catching at her skin every time she moved her hands. Every time she shifted her fingers, flakes of it fell to the floor, drifting lazily in the antiseptic tainted air. Every time she breathed, she could taste it.

Thick, heavy, metallic. And so very wrong. It shouldn't be on her hands. It shouldn't be staining her skin. She felt electricity prickling through her veins, a desperate need to run and scrub herself clean. But she needed to stay where she was. She couldn't move. She couldn't risk leaving. They might be looking for her. They might have news.

...

One of the most important lessons for someone in his line of work was when to stand and fight and when to run. True, there were times when that lesson had to be allowed to slip. If some innocent person were in the warehouse, for example, he would have stood his ground until either they got clear or his adversaries took him down.

But he was the only one inside who wasn't a member of the gang. And he was only meant to have been poking around, not taking them all out. And he'd already been fighting with them and losing. And he was already exhausted, still suffering the after effects of the chest infection that had developed after he and Higgins had been yacht-jacked and spent the day in the ocean. And there were so many guys chasing him, and they were so well-trained that, even in lesser numbers, he would have been hard-pressed to beat them. So, Magnum ran as fast as he could.

He wasn't as tall as _some_ people, with their Spice Girls obsession and freakishly long legs, but he was fit and regularly pushed his cardio, sometimes even when he didn't want to, thanks, 'Lads.' Even so, he couldn't afford to slow down, not when these guys were close behind him. So why were his strides getting shorter? He tried to do a quick self-assessment without getting distracted and realized his legs were feeling heavier than they should. He tried to force his feet to raise up higher, his knees to bend faster, but the exertion made his breath stick in his chest.

Okay, so not getting enough oxygen would explain the way his muscles were struggling with what should have been an easy task. But why wasn't he getting enough air? His lung capacity was far beyond that of the average person thanks in no small part to his SEAL training. He had to push himself hard just to get a little out of breath, and, while this was a flat-out sprint, he should be able to keep going a lot longer than he had been.

He stumbled then and crashed down hard to his knees. The shock of pain as it flared made him gasp, and that made him cough. Nothing about this sequence of events seemed right to him, and he tried to figure out what was happening while he got his hands beneath himself and pushed up. He was hoping to snap to his feet in one smooth movement. Like he normally would. Instead, his arms gave out halfway through as a flash of agony flared up in his stomach, and he ended up sprawled on the floor.

The chill of the old concrete started seeping through his clothes, and he realized for the first time that, despite the fighting and running, he was already cold. There was a voice in his ear, but there was a roaring noise drowning out all other sounds. He recognized it for what it was; his own blood surging through his veins. He also recognized it for the bad sign it was. Something was affecting his entire body, something bad. He stayed where he was, flat out on the floor, and swept his hands over his stomach even as other hands grabbed at his arms and shoulders.

The pain was instantly ten times worse, and he finally realized what had happened as he was being pulled roughly to his feet. Somehow, he wasn't sure exactly how, one of the guys he'd been fighting had managed to slip past his defenses and stick a knife in his side.

…

She was getting odd looks from the other people in the waiting room. She could feel them, the hairs on the back of her neck standing up at the scrutiny. She wondered if it was the blood on her hands that was drawing so much attention. It was quite a fashion statement after all, the shockingly dark red against her pale skin.

It was also starting to make her feel sick. The way patches of it seemed to be turning black as it somehow kept getting drier. The way the warmth of it had faded, leached away, and left her entire body feeling cold. She thought maybe she wash it off, but that would mean standing, walking, coordinated movements. She wasn't sure she had in her.

…

Now that he knew the wound was there, he could feel the blood soaking into his shirt and the very real burning pain. And he was wondering how he was ever going to get this mess sorted and get out of the warehouse and across the parking lot to the Ferrari. And he totally missed whatever was being said by the man standing in front of him.

"Uh… no?" he offered, seeing the guy was clearly waiting for a response of some sort. A fist slammed into his face, snapping his head back. Wrong response then. Never mind, it really didn't matter if he said what these goons wanted him to or not. What mattered was the British voice in his ear and the insane plan it seemed to be cooking up.

"Don't do it," he ground out through clenched teeth, wondering, not for the first time, why he had saddled himself with an insane person as a partner. He ignored the look of confusion on the faces surrounding him as the voice attempted to explain the validity of its nonsense plan. Magnum groaned at the words "gunpowder" and "controlled explosion." His attention was caught by a flash of light, and he tuned out the voice in favor of staring at the knife that was being held in front of his eyes.

"I'll do what I like." The man was smiling, and he clearly expected to enjoy what he was going to do.

"Wasn't talking to you, ma… gah." The last word was lost in a grunt of pain that he just couldn't keep in as the knife was pushed slowly into his side, just barely missing the wound already there. The voice in his ear erupted into a frenzy of half-finished sentences, clearly talking to itself more than him, and he thought he heard an engine revving. Then, as the knife was twisted around in a lazy circle, everything faded out a little.

He came back to himself as shouts of alarm started to echo through the empty warehouse and a car came racing through the open front door, ripping the closed door next to it clean off the hinges. At the same time, something exploded off to the left, sounding a little like some sort of rapid gunfire. Magnum dropped gracelessly to the floor as the men holding him took off toward the back doors, his legs shaky and too weak to hold him up. There was a noise off to the right of him somewhere, and then there were more hands on him. He tried to fight them off, but either they were preternaturally strong or he was getting weaker by the second.

"Thomas! Stop fighting me!"

"Higgy?" Magnum let his body relax as he realized it was Higgins who was holding him this time. Some part of his mind started to race as it told him that the bad guys could have had guns, that she could have been lying bleeding out on the floor after that insane stunt. But a much larger part of his mind was telling him the threat was gone, chased away by Higgins charging to the rescue, and that he needed to just catch his breath for a minute.

By the time Higgins had found the two knife wounds and started pressing her weight against them, Magnum was out like a light. He didn't even get to hear Higgins sweetly insulting the intelligence of the nine-one-one operator after being asked if she was sure the situation required an ambulance.

…

Her left hand was clean. She blinked at it, waiting for the blood to reappear. Instead, fingers wrapped around her palm. Warm. So warm. She shuddered as she realised just how cold she was, just how icy the blood had made her feel.

"How you doing, Jules?"

She lifted her head, feeling the strain in her neck and realising with a shock just how long she had been staring at her hands. Rick was crouched in front of her, holding her clean hand, while T.C. was sitting next to her, gently wiping the last traces of blood off her right hand.

"They wouldn't let me go back with him." Even to her own ears, her voice sounded far too quiet. But her boys didn't seem to have any problem hearing her.

"He's still in surgery." By comparison, Rick's voice was gentle and calm. "The knife did some real damage." He unwrapped one of his hands from hers and reached up to her cheek. The pain was a surprise to her, and she pulled back, breath hissing between her teeth.

Oh, that's right. They'd had people outside the warehouse too.

…

They'd taken to wearing Bluetooth headsets and keeping a phone line open when they had to split up. So Higgins heard when the men inside spotted Magnum. Unfortunately, it was right around the time the roving patrol had spotted her. She hated clever bad guys.

She'd taken off at a run, hoping to lose at least one of them. Three against one were bad odds, but she thought she might be able to handle two. It didn't seem like it was her lucky day though. The three of them managed to stick with her. And, in her ear, she could hear Magnum fighting with the men inside.

No help there then. Time to change the plan. So she slowed, just a little, just enough to hear the footsteps behind her start to catch up. Then she stopped, slamming her foot down so she could spin. She was swinging as she turned and caught the man closest to her with as vicious a right hook as she could manage.

There, now it was two on one, and wasn't that what she'd wanted in the first place? If she'd have had the time, Higgins would have rolled her eyes. But the other two were right on top of her. She let the one grab her and fell under his weight, trying to grab for the knife his unconscious buddy had been carrying.

The third man just sort of stopped, watching the struggle in front of him. She reassessed her evaluation of the group; _someone_ had some smarts, but it wasn't any of these three.

The man pinning her took advantage of the fact that her one arm was outflung to punch her, hard, sending her head bouncing off the ground. If she hadn't spent years training and sparring with men bigger than she was, it would have knocked her out. As it was, her ears rang and her vision blurred. Her fingers touched the blade though, and she was yanking the knife toward her before she even realised what she was doing.

The third man, who seemed to have been enjoying the view up until this point, yelled something as Higgins drove the knife into his friend's side. He fell off her, gasping for breath through the pain, and she rolled, pulling herself to her feet.

Her mind was racing, trying to think of a strategy that would stand a chance of working. No way of getting the element of surprise like she had with the first man. And no chance of finding another weapon to use.

She could hear Magnum panting as he ran from the men inside, and her heart dropped. If he couldn't stand against these guys, she didn't stand a chance.

For nearly four seconds, the two of them stood and stared at each other. And then, to her absolute shock, the man simply turned tail and ran. She stared after him for a moment or two, utterly flabbergasted. Then the first man stirred, groaning, and she turned to deal him a swift kick to the temple, knocking him back out.

Magnum was gasping in her ear, and she needed to do something, she needed to help him. She pushed aside the dizziness she was feeling, that was a problem for later, and ran to the Ferrari, getting Magnum's gun while quickly trying to explain her absurd plan to him

"That way, when the fire heats the gunpowder, it should sound like… and these guys don't all seem to be that smart… if I stagger the bullets, they won't go off simultaneously…" She wasn't sure she was making a whole lot of sense; words seemed to be sliding away when she tried to reach for them. But Magnum was crying out in pain.

So she lay the bullets in a staggered line and set fire to some paper; they had both taken to carrying small survival flints on their keychains after the _T. R. Belle_ incident. Then she ran back to the car, grabbed the spare key from the trunk, and waited for the fire to set off the first bullet.

When she floored the gas and sent the car leaping forward, she didn't even realise she ripped the door off its hinges. She felt the impact as the airbag inflated though, barely biting back a groan. She had no idea what she was going to do if she ended up having to face down all the men inside. She had a vague plan of simply running them all over and hoping not to hit Magnum.

When the bad guys scattered, she thought she'd maybe earned a sigh of relief. But then Magnum dropped to the ground, and she could see the blood staining his shirt, and any sort of breathing was put on the back burner as she pulled off her shirt and ran to him.

...

"The nurse over there said you wouldn't let anyone take a look at you. You sure you don't need a doctor, Higgy Baby?" T.C.'s voice was gentle too, almost as gentle as his hands as they cradled hers, lending his warmth to her half-frozen digits.

"My head feels… odd." She couldn't think of the right word to describe it, but she was sure they would know what she meant.

Rick's hand was still on her cheek, and she let her head drop against it, hoping it would soothe the ache that was suddenly making itself known. Her eyes were drifting shut, and she couldn't seem to stop them. She was sure she needed to stay awake, but she couldn't remember why.

Was it Magnum? Did he need her to do something? She tried to rouse herself, to ask him what case they were working on, but a bright light appeared in her eyes and hurt so much that she decided she would rather slip into the darkness that was waiting for her.

…

"I can't believe they both ended up in the hospital." T.C. really did sound baffled. "'Simple surveillance,' they said. 'No need for backup,' they said." He looked over at the two beds, the occupants both deeply asleep. "See if we let either of you go off on your own again."

Between Magnum's severe blood loss and Higgins' moderate concussion, there was no chance of either of them being discharged until the following day at the earliest.

Kumu had stopped by to check on the pair and brought food, knowing Rick and T.C. would rather not leave their friends' sides. Katsumoto had tried to take Higgins' statement but, after the third time she had said, "Gunpowder doesn't like fire, you know," he had wisely decided to try again when she had recovered a little.

"It's fine," he'd assured her, as she had taken on a crestfallen expression. "I'll have to come back to talk to Magnum anyway."

The room was pretty quiet, so when Magnum started to shift, Rick and T.C. noticed instantly and hurried over to his bedside, careful not to block his view of Higgins' bed.

"Tommy? You're okay. You're in the hospital." They'd learned in the months following their escape from the Korengal that disorientation could be a real problem.

"Safe and sound on Oahu, brother."

Magnum's eyes finally opened, glazed from the painkillers but vaguely alert. He looked between Rick and T.C. for a long second, seeming confused by something. His brow furrowed, but he didn't need to say anything.

"Higgy's here too, T.M., in the next bed."

Magnum's head rolled, slowly, over the pillow, to take in the sight of Higgins sleeping just an arm's length away from him. His eyebrows raised slightly, as if he was surprised, and he turned back to the two men looking at him.

"What…" He swallowed hard. "What happened to… to her?"

Rick grinned, unable to help himself. "She crashed the Ferrari."


End file.
